#AND in short Thawne would have been better if Legends stole Tom Cavangh for a season. No HR

[cogentranting]

In which I tell Legends of Tomorrow how to do it’s job regarding the Legion of Doom

The Legion of Doom story line could have been so much better if they actually played to the differences between the members and recognized the established canon qualities of those characters. (It’s not that I disliked the season, it’s just that it could have been so much more if they hadn’t decided that a watered-down Eobard Thawne was the best thing since sliced bread)

For one thing, all three of the main Legion members have wildly different motivations for wanting to change reality. Thawne is acting out of a very primal survival instinct- he’s being hunted and he wants to prevent being erased. It’s immediate and urgent and it’s going to make him dangerous and desperate. Darhk is the most supervillain-esque in his motivation- he also wants to avoid dying but it’s a very distant abstract thing for him (he knows he’s going to die 30+ years down the road- that’s a far cry from seeing a corpse-like monster coming for you every time you stay in one place for too long) but beyond that he wants power. Merlyn, on the other hand (ba dum tss), is actually primarily motivated by loss- most recently that has been loss of power, but his bigger concern has always been his family. Arrow 3x12 indicates that Merlyn is actually a lot more remorseful than he lets on, and when you come right down to it, losing his family is what changed him and given the option, he would potentially undo a lot his choices in order to regain his family. Merlyn wants his wife and son to be alive, and to repair his relationship with his daughter (he goes about these things in a horrible perverse way, of course, but the underlying idea isn’t evil. And of course he would definitely grab power along the way if he could. He was a billionaire ceo who was best friends with the Queen’s- he was never a saint).

Apart from a single throwaway comment, it was also never played with that these three men are from three different times- Darhk was pulled from the 70′s (??I think??), Merlyn from 2016, and Thawne is the distant future. Could have been interesting. 

The three also have three very different methodologies. All of them are mastermind style villains (which was somewhat ignored. They didn’t seem to plan anything. Thawne a bit, but the other two didn’t). But they diverge quite a bit. Darhk completely embraces destruction and intimidation. He puts his forces right out in the open and faces his enemies on a regular basis (he probably has close to twenty different fights with Team Arrow). He’s about coercion and intimidation and ultimately his goals are much more inclined toward destruction for it’s own sake than the other two. Thawne is a very personal villain. His plots are typically about his own immediate needs and personal vendettas. His time on Flash was all about revenge and getting home. He didn’t have world domination goals or some manifesto. It was very selfish. He’s also a master manipulator. He orchestrated events for (I don’t want to look up the number- 17?) years to carry out his plan. He created a new identity for himself and worked his way into the lives of many people. He formed relationships with Barry, Cisco, and Caitlin and moved them like chess pieces, even shaping their characters into who he needed them to be. He maintained a paradoxical love and hatred for Barry at the same time, and truly cared about Cisco and Caitlin but was willing to toss them aside (murder them) at a moment’s notice. The fact that Thawne’s attempts to control the Legion were limited to “I’m a speedster; do what I say” is really disappointing given the manipulation he’s capable of. Merlyn is the most ideological of the three- he (like his nemesis Oliver) has a crusade that he believes in. He doesn’t delight in destruction the way Darhk does, it’s a tool he uses when he deems it necessary (which is often). He’s ruthless but not against those he cares about like Thawne is. Merlyn will go to great lengths to protect his loved ones (as much as he’s capable of love) like Thea, Moira, Tommy and at times Oliver. Merlyn is also the most likely to genuinely try to win people over to his crusade- he tries at different times to convince Moira, Robert, Tommy, Thea and Oliver that his crusade is actually just. Merlyn strikes a middle ground between Darhk and Thawne in terms of intimidation vs. manipulation but he’s also very prone to striking deals that he undercuts for his own advantage. 

So, based on these methodologies shown on Flash and Arrow: Thawne should have tried a subtle manipulation of both the Legion and the Legends; Darhk should have been the most violent and most inclined to killing or tormenting the Legends and probably the least concerned about leaving time intact; Merlyn (having potentially the most noble goals) should have tried to play both sides, trying to convince the Legends (particularly Sara- which he did briefly but... it was very brief and poorly argued) that he was going to influence reality for the better by undoing the damage he caused (no Undertaking, no five years in hell for Oliver and Sara, no Slade Wilson siege, no League invasion of Starling, no Rebecca, Robert, Tommy, Laurel, or Sara deaths, maybe even offer to take Darhk and Thawne out of the picture eventually). With minds like the Legion’s have, the three of them interacting should have been a master chess game. 

And skill sets. Thawne is the science guy. He’s got the science-based super power, he’s from the future. He should be all things tech and time travel and super powered. And they mostly did that. BUT. Damien is the occult guy. He’s very old and full of knowledge of magical artifacts and secret orders. The spear of destiny is an ancient magical artifact. Darhk should have been the one they relied on for information on that. And he should have had an established rivalry with Amaya (the other magic user). With that- I will never understand why they chose to have their version of Darhk be without magic. It would have balanced out so much better if our three villains were superpower, magic, skill (tech, once Snart arrived). Merlyn, being somewhat versed in the occult, but not on Darhk’s level, should have been stressed as the modern characteer- aka the one who knows the most about the world. The well-traveled character who has met and gained knowledge of many (if not most) of the Arrowverse characters. Merlyn should have been the one to know the most about the Legends, and the most about what’s going on in the world. And it REALLY should have been emphasized that Merlyn is the best fighter (not necessarily most powerful, but certainly most skilled). Because canonically, Merlyn’s fighting skill is only surpassed by Ra’s and Oliver (and maybe Slade and Sara. They’re certainly close). That’s 2-4 people in the entire Arrowverse. So yes, acknowledge the pre-established abilities of the characters and use that to create a team of villains that actually seems to gain something from teaming up. As is, they really made me question why Thawne was working with the other two at all. He seemed to want lackeys so why didn’t he hire lackeys?

Snart should have been included earlier. Snart could have been played for so much more emotion than the other three. Apart from Sara, the Legends don’t really have any connection to the members of the Legion (some small ones, which should have been mentioned) so having their teammate who died for them, there and fighting against them could have been exceptionally tragic. But it was ignored except for Mick and wasn’t introduced soon enough to really explore. Bringing him in sooner could have made for a more gradual arc that established the split in Mick’s loyalties and the team’s distrust of him (making them look less like massive jerks) and could have shown a gradual fracturing the of the Snart/Mick relationship so that Snart eventually turning on Mick actually made sense. He also provides a nice contrast to the other three Legion members by being smaller scale. He’s not a villain mastermind bent on destroying (fill in the blank)- he’s a rogue and a thief. Very smart, so he can keep pace to a certain degree with the Legion. But not ambitious on their scale. And yet still very contemptuous of the more powerful villains. Playing Snart as the outsider to the group could have been very intriguing. 

And finally, Doomworld was done wrong. First of all, every single one of the Legion members aimed too small. He has the power to alter reality so Mr. “I want to nuke the world and create my own society that I control absolutely” makes himself mayor? Thawne basically reclaims what he had at the beginning of the Flash and does nothing else for himself, not even going back to his own time period like he spent 17 years plotting to do? Merlyn shows no trace of his crusade that lead to the Undertaking? No sweeping cleansing of his city? Snart doesn’t make any attempt to fix his and Mick’s childhoods (like he did in season 1 the moment he got a time ship) and doesn’t even mention Lisa? And the importance of Team Arrow and Team Flash was massively underplayed. I know they couldn’t be present, but they should have been more talked about. For one thing, the Legends should have showed a little bit of concern for the fact that numerous friends of theirs had been brutally murdered in this reality. Apart from pushing Sara’s buttons with Laurel, no one seemed affected on a personal level. And the idea that Darhk was the one who killed them/had them killed/(more likely) changed reality so that they were dead, makes no sense because (being a past version of himself) Darhk is the only one without a personal vendetta against the teams. Thawne is the Flash’s nemesis, he should have been the one to have done something to Barry and whoever else from Flash. And Merlyn should have been the one to act against Team Arrow (maybe not Laurel since the fact that Darhk is the one to kill her in reality is important)- particularly Oliver. Merlyn should have either forcibly brought Oliver to his side, like he did with Thea, since Merlyn has often expressed that he sees Oliver as his son, or been the one to kill Oliver since he is his nemesis and Oliver most recently cut off his hand and left him with nothing (no League, no company, no master plan, no Thea). Rather than try to convince the audience that the Legion had a greater desire to torment the Legends than they did Team Arrow and Flash (who they have much greater reason to hate), the show should have played it as, they didn’t kill them because of Mick’s influence and because they really didn’t see the Legends as a threat- they underestimated them. Which is more in keeping with the themes and conception of Legends anyway. 

[and really: Thawne is the reason that Ronnie died- Stein should care a LOT about that. Darhk imprisoned Ray for months- he should care about that. Nate (I believe) is from Star city (or maybe Central) so the terror that at least one member of the Legion inflicted on his home could have been used to establish a connection there (he knew someone killed in the Undertaking etc). Rip’s motivations in season 1 are strikingly similar to Merlyn’s motivations (save his wife and son) so that could have been toyed with. Mick and Sara are not the only one’s who could have personal reasons for stopping the Legion.]